(Photo: a scuba class at the end of the Marginal.)The ethical line that I have been staring at about paying people has been eating at me again. Like I've said before the majority of people that I face day to day when I am photographing will ask for money which I have never paid. This makes street photography very difficult because it's tougher to step back and blend in when people are watching you like guard dogs waiting to attack. Many times now I've had people come out of the woodworks when I'm shooting to harass me and ask for money. Habitually, I seek permission in many instances, but am overwhelmingly asked to pay or flatly rejected.
While working at newspapers, it was a lot easier pitch for several reasons: 1.) I knew where the photo would go, 2.) People were familiar with journalism and my publication, 3.) Culturally people understood photography more. Essentially, having mutual understanding between subject and photographer usually worked out. Payment would almost never come up. I worked on a homeless project for several months and that is the only comparable situation to today.
It was a different world with dirt poor people, many who were drug addicts, alcoholics or mentally unstable, and typically with very little education. The socioeconomic situation is the same in my situation here more than anything. People I encounter are very poor and uneducated and fear exploitation. With tourism growing here, they have more than likely had success being paid for being photographed. It has frustrated me hearing from amateur photographers who I have spent time with that they often pay subjects.
The photo club here that I am part (started and is led by a diplomat from the British High Commission my UK classmates: http://kupfula.com) which I have mentioned before is made up of amateurs. The first time it came up was when one of the members, an American, was asking more advice after seeing some of my photography. She was impressed by the fact that people were in all of my photographs and that I had achieved some level of intimacy. "How do you do that? How do you get so close?" She then told me that she had difficulty and often paid subjects. Later, I asked other members many who also paid. It was frustrating. Even worse, when I did my photo workshop for Mozambican journalists, it was disturbing that so many of them didn't see the problem with it.
To be sure, I was rejected and harassed in the U.S. too. I was pushed around by police and attacked another time on the street during the L.A. Riots when I could still barely operate a camera (this was incidentally the first time I ever sold pictures). During one of my first assignments in my first internships at the Pasadena Star-News in Los Angeles, California, I had a construction foreman who tried to beat me up. A shady mafia type figure kicked in my car door which would have been me if I hadn't escaped while I was on an assignment in Florida during an investigative story. It's one part of the job that I've always hated, and have many more stories as I'm betting our classmates and faculty do as well. As an editor, these experiences were valuable because I worked hard to keep our photographers safe.
For much of my time in Florida, I was trying to make inroads into an African American community in the city I lived in and had some success but nowhere close to what I had envisioned. Access is key but paying for it does not seem justifiable. In my workshop I told attendees that if they paid, it would hurt the integrity of their work, and people may question the truthfulness and honesty of their photographs.
Here are some scenarios that I have been asking myself: 1.) If I want to photograph a cocoanut vendor or a craftsman, is it wrong to buy a cocoanut or trinket so he will let me photograph him? To me this is tough because I have actually photographed people while a friend is buying something or have gone back later to buy something. But when premeditated it seems a bit shady. Still, folks here are very poor and for the same reason I try to go to an independent produce vendor rather than a hypermarket, essentially because to help out the little guy (charity), I feel that wouldn't be a horrible breach. 2.) If I photograph somebody dirt poor and later bring them some food or a few cents, is that wrong. I am torn here and feel that this may be a grey area.
My ethical boundaries are personal, but they are engrained mostly through years of working at newspapers. Really, it would be easy to do and one could get great pictures with nobody ever knowing. Still, even though I am not answerable to a institution whose product is truth, I would not be comfortable with my work if it was tainted by crossing what I thought was a line. As an independent photographer, I am still establishing those lines.
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